Where’s the funding for Kengre Barracks?

WHAT is the status of police investigations into the incomplete Kengre Mobile Police Barracks in Yangoru, East Sepik? If probed well, it may reveal certain gross abuses by administrators and custodians of public funds at the highest level in direct contravention of the respective appropriation bills and their trust deeds within the provisions of the Public Finance Management Act. It is common knowledge that the K50 million for the Sepik Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) was appropriated under the 2013 budgetary appropriation. A full cash warrant was released and parked into SSEZ trust account with the Bank South Pacific. K18.5 million that was held in this trust account was pre-committed in 2015 as per the National Executive Council approval and contract sanctioned by the Head of State for the barracks’ construction. Actual mobilisation work with 20 per cent down payment may have began in 2016 . By the end of 2017 fiscal year, a residual amount between K12 and K15 million in the SSEZ trust was frozen when Finance Department took control of all Government trust accounts. Any ledger kept on that 2013 appropriated SSEZ funds will reveal its trail since the works on the barracks ceased in 2018. It will be interesting to note whether the 2013 dead funds have been resurrected and diverted into the 2018 budgetary appropriation for other activities instead of the barracks or worse still, someone may have directed that funding to be utilised elsewhere. It is already a foregone opportunity for the province to find new money when money was already made available since 2013.

Anti-Corruption Advocate